Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon (34 page)

“Not really.”

I looked out the window and longed for a divorce. Joyce brought our food with great efficiency. Meggie’s milk had a straw and lid. Double bits. Jon took a bite of split pea soup and raised his eyebrows.

“This is good,” he said. “I wonder if he’ll give me the recipe.”

“I doubt it,” I said. “It’s his mother’s recipe.”

He looked at me but didn’t say anything. It hit me that he really didn’t think of me as having a former private life, not in any concrete way like a daughter who looked like an ex-wife, and a refrigerator door covered with photos. Until the good soup hit his taste buds, my so-called adventures had been abstract.

The spinach omelet was delicious, even Meggie had bites.

“Hey, Spring. I thought that was you,” said Stroud.

He stood by our table with a drooling infant, sprouting black sea urchin hair, slung over his arm. Chance smiled like mad. The drooler smiled and kicked his feet back. Stroud watched as a saliva string hit the floor, then he smooshed it around with his foot like we all do, and gave us a droll smile. A young boy ran up asking for money for the gum machine. Meggie gave him the eye, always picking up tips from the older kids.

“No gum, Tito,” said Stroud. “It’ll rot your teeth.”

Tito grinned his not-rotten teeth, then winked at Meggie just like his father used to do, and took off to hit up his Aunt Joyce. His wiry brushed up hair looked Hispanic like his mother, but he had Stroud’s blue eyes. I mentally doodled a soul patch on his handsome little mug and put
have rhubarb versus butterscotch talk with Meggie
on my to-do list. There would be a Tito down her back road.

Stroud looked good. He was never handsome but all of him still looked interesting. He was younger than Jon but his wavy black hair was going gray around the temples and his tan face was getting some lines. His eyes were the same, inquisitive and vivid. I hoped I still looked half as good to him as he did to me.

“Is Tito your oldest?” I asked.

I was asking if Tito was the child he left me over, and he knew it.

“Yes, that’s him. Alan junior. We call him Tito,” he said. “Then Luisa and Luz a year later, and Pancho here.”

“This is my husband, Jon Moon. Margaret and Chance. Meet Stroud.”

“Good to meet you, Jon. You too Margaret,” he said. “I remember Chance, a favorable thing,”

Meggie tossed him a distracted wave. She was eating my hash browns smothered in ketchup and watching Tito work on his aunt.

Jon stood up to shake hands. “Pull up a chair,” he said. “We just started.”

“Thanks, but my wife is waiting. I’m just dropping off the girls.”

“How is Leeann?” I asked.

“Going a little crazy,” said Stroud. “I’ve been on the road since he was born.”           

“Thanks for offering Hannah money last time she was through here,” said Jon.

“No problem,” said Stroud. “How’d that work out? I tried calling you back, but it didn’t go through.”

I told him my battery had died with all the roaming and then, don’t ask me why, I gave him a brief version of the cemetery and Bob and Sherry. All of a sudden I was a combo of nervous wreck and pillow talk. There might have been a little loss stirred into the drugs. Stroud was smiling and shaking his head. Jon watched.

“That cemetery has a magnetic attraction for you,” said Stroud. “What happened to your hand?”

“I was in a car accident a few months ago. This is just a fix.”

“More than an accident,” said Jon. “She survived hanging over a cliff for four nights.”

“That was you?” asked Stroud. “Guys on the road followed it.”           

“They have a survival pool going?” I asked.

He shrugged. “They’re truckers. You in Sparky?”

“Audi.”

“Too bad.”

I told him about my house exploding in an earthquake and taking the Prius down in the blaze. Everything burned to the ground.

His eyes looked inward at the memory of my hideaway in the hills, and then came back to the diner.

“Too bad,” he said. “That was a cool place.”

A petite woman in tight white jeans and cowboy boots came in with a matched pair of dark-haired girls. She looked our way. She was some kind of tense.

“Time for the hand off,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Jon. It was good to see you again, Hannah. Joyce thinks you’re going to run out on the bill.”

Jon smiled. I thought it was a great idea. He hooked up with his family as we pretended to eat. Leeann took baby Pancho outside while Stroud talked to his girls. She came back a minute later and talked to Joyce. Joyce scowled, opened the register, counted out money and handed it to her.

Leeann carried Pancho to our table. He lit up when Chance reappeared in his world. Chance smiled. She frowned. She was wearing one of Stroud’s blue chambray work shirts with the sleeves rolled up and dark milk leaks from her breasts under a name patch with block letters: A. Watts. It was tucked into a heavy belt, the silver buckle was embossed with the John Deere logo. A small gold cross on a delicate chain hung in the valley between her breasts.

She put down eighty dollars in twenties, turned Pancho away from my smiling baby, and looked me in the eye.

“She shouldn’t have done that,” she said. “It’s not how we are.”

She walked out the door. Stroud kissed his girls, called Tito and left without looking back. We watched through the window as he met up with Leeann in front and headed for the car. He hung an arm over her board straight shoulders as they disappeared in the parking lot. A few minutes later, a blue Volvo flashed between the trucks and was gone. I felt like I had frequently felt over the years, like Leeann in the boondocks knew more about finding and keeping the man she loved than I ever would.

Chance fussed about the loss of his new friend. Meggie ate ketchup with her finger and looked back and forth at her parents. Jon stared at his soup. I drank coffee.

“I need to go potty, Mama.”

“Okay, Angel.”

Jon looked up at me.

“What’s Sparky?” he asked.

“My Prius,” I said. “I hated that car.”

I took Meggie to the restroom and picked the stall without the hairy balls. It had a hairy coochie with a license plate number. Still no idea what it meant. By the time we were done Jon had settled the bill. Standing in that place felt sad and awkward. Joyce ignored us as she walked by with a pot of coffee.

“Bits, Mama?”

“I guess, Angel,” I said.

Jon pushed the door open and followed me out. He put his arm over my shoulder the way Stroud had Leeann. I shrugged him off. I was having enough trouble keeping my shoulders up. We loaded everyone back in the car and headed north.

I started to cry. He reached over to take my hand, but I pulled away. My blubbering got Meggie started. Then Chance. What was it with those two? My mother cried every night after my father died, it just pissed me off. I was sick of all the crying. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.

“Pull over at the farm stand. It’s the next exit,” I said. “We can get everyone settled down.”

“We’re not going to stop again,” he said.

“Yes we are, Jon. I’m not going to dinner empty handed.”

He pulled off and parked in back by the picnic tables and dog bowl. His face looked like stone. Meggie stopped crying when she recognized the happy place. I got her out to play while I washed my face with the hose, dried it with a diaper, and put on lip gloss. Jon got Chance and went to look around. He came back with pickled garlic and asparagus, and sunflowers wrapped in newspaper and tied with twine.

“This okay?”

“It’s fine,” I said. “Did you meet the woman who owns the place? Bandana. Raw hands. I haven’t slept with her yet, in case you’re wondering. I left a few stones unturned in the boondocks.”

“I didn’t think we’d run into him,” he said.

“Yeah, well, he lives here.”

“He’s a good guy,” he said.

“You want Meggie to meet that good guy?” I asked. “He lied to me about her.”

We sat in silence until Marty called.

He had a job proposition he wanted to talk over, a dinosaur movie on the Big Island. Volcano and rubbery ferns. They were just forming up the crew. Script still a ways out. Details to follow. I hung up and told Jon we were on for lunch the next day. He nodded but didn’t say anything.

“You played with us too, Jon.”

We loaded everyone again and headed north. Meggie filled the silence with her backseat chatter. Chance smiled at every enlightened word. I directed Jon to the cemetery.

Meggie dragged Jon over to see the angels and lambs while I stood at my grandmother’s grave and wondered if she’d gone through the same weak patches in her life. She always seemed so strong. Jon’s voice rumbled a few rows over. I could see Stroud’s smiling blue eyes and his arm around Leeann who had been smart enough to fall in love with a man who didn’t have children. I wondered if his ex-wife came around. What difference did it make? Even if she did, it had nothing to do with my life.

“Everybody still there?” asked Bob.

His smiling face came over the wall.

“Bob Bob Bob!” said Meggie. She did a happy dance to Gus yipping over the wall.

“Come on over, Margaret,” yelled Sherry.

“You want to hand her over?” asked Bob.

“Sure,” I said.

Jon managed to avoid the sleeping souls I’d ridden rough shod over last time and parked at the base of the wall.

“Meet Jon,” I said.

“Nice to finally meet you in person, Jon,” said Bob.

Sherry yelled from the other side of the wall that it was going to be nice to meet Jon too. He climbed up on the car and handed Meggie over. She screamed at the top, then immediately started calling to Gus.

“See you when you get here,” said Bob. “Think you can find it?”

“I never told him, Bob,” I said.

He disappeared down the ladder and Jon climbed off the car.

“That’s a new one,” said Jon. “What didn’t you tell me?”

“A lot of things,” I said.

He put his arms around me.

“He loved you, Hannah. It was in his face.”

“It wasn’t love,” I said. “I only knew him a few days.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

I don’t even know why I was so sad. I didn’t want to live at a truck stop and have a baby a year while my husband spent his days on the road, bullshitting like a car salesman about whether or not a woman would turn up dead. I loved Jon.

“I love you more,” said Jon.

“Why did you want to go there?” I asked. “We were just getting back on track.”

“I thought it was fair, that I should see where you’d been. I didn’t realize. You worried her.”

“She doesn’t need to worry about me. I would never sleep with a married man. Not when I have one at home.”

He kissed me and slid his hand down my ass. I was pissed about his little side trip, but I had to hand it to him, it had been entertaining. He got a hell of a lot more than he bargained for and we were eighty dollars to the good.

“You going to want a side of cowboy boots with that thong and tattoo?” I asked.

“Jesus. Whatever you want. Let’s ask them to take the kids for ice cream tonight. A single scoop will do it.”

“You’re relentless,” I said.

I found Bob and Sherry’s with only one wrong turn. Chance woke up from a self-defense nap and gave Sherry his most charming toothless smile.

“Oh, Sugar. Look at you smile,” she laughed.

He bounced up and down in Jon’s arms and air suck laughed. She laughed her musical laugh in return. Gus was letting Meggie think she was in charge. Bob and Jon sat in the backyard with Meggie while I gave Chance a bottle in the kitchen and watched Sherry finish dinner. I told her about getting the eighty dollars back and seeing Stroud.

“He the rhubarb man?” she asked.

“He was,” I said. “Now he’s a married man with four kids. Jon claims he still loves me. Though Jon says he loves me more.”

“Jon’s a smart man. He rhubarb?”

“He is this week. He’s usually butterscotch pudding.”

“I see it,” she said. “You look pale. You want to lie down for a while before dinner? I’ll take that baby.”

I was overcome with exhaustion. Just thinking about their guest bedroom made me sag with relief. I told them to go ahead and eat, my stomach felt off from the pain medication. I watched a slice of sky through a crack in the linen curtains as I fell asleep to their low murmurs and an occasional yip.

I was so groggy. I couldn’t remember where I was. I stood up but was so dizzy I had to sit down on the floor before I fell. My stomach roiled. I was on fire. Richie Havens played softly in the other room. Jon must have brought the CD in from the car. Their voices were far away. I shook with violent chills. I tried to stand up again but my legs wouldn’t cooperate.

The next time the ceiling light was blasting in my eyes when it wasn’t blocked by the shapes of the EMTs. Where was I? Was I dreaming? I looked sideways and found Jon’s worried eyes. He started toward me but the EMT motioned for him to stay back.

They lifted me onto a gurney and telescoped the legs up then pushed me through the door to the waiting ambulance. Jon rode in back with me and held my good hand. The bandage was gone from my left arm, my finger and forearm were swollen and looked red hot angry. The stitches had popped off all the careful repair work. The EMT sprayed something on the area and covered it in a loose gauze wrap.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Infection,” she said. “They’ll know more in the ER. It’s a good unit. You’ll be in good hands.”

We rode with lights, no sirens that time of night. Equipment rattled around us. The driver slowed at lights, but not quite enough to take the turns without swaying. I squeezed Jon’s hand and we looked at each other. This ordeal would never end.

“Did you ride in the ambulance with me after the accident?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t remember that. Did you call Eric?”

“They’re on the way.”

“Did he mention Monday surgery?”

“You know he did.”

“I’m impatient. It’s a bad habit. I end up making bad decisions.”